


The Hornet Sleeps Tonight

by laurelofthestory



Series: A World Called Terra [4]
Category: Terraria
Genre: Bees, Bugs & Insects, Cross-Posted on Tumblr, Developing Relationship, F/M, Poisoning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-30
Updated: 2018-10-30
Packaged: 2019-08-03 00:04:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16315241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laurelofthestory/pseuds/laurelofthestory
Summary: The Guide's still an adventurer at heart, so when Alalia offers to escort him through her jungle home, he's ecstatic. Unfortunately, the jungle's creatures aren't too fond of the emissary of the Underworld's guardian paying a visit.





	The Hornet Sleeps Tonight

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on Tumblr on October 1st according to the Inktober prompt "poisoned."
> 
> I got burned out by the end of this, so the ending's a little rushed, but I figured I should put more content of this out there. Vaguely connected to my larger Terraria canon.

The Guide had never actually been in the jungle before.

Of course, he knew a fair bit about it, as that was part of his job. He’d even actually  _read_  about the area’s flora and fauna on the occasions he had time to, rather than simply accepting his intrinsic knowledge of the place. But he’d never actually gone – the jungle was notoriously cruel to those unprepared, and despite his status and  _condition_ , he wasn’t actually all that strong and tended to keep to the pure forests whenever he was waiting for the next hero of Terraria to arrive. True, the worst that could really happen if he did go was him dying, and that in itself wasn’t all that much of a problem for him, but it was still a rather unpleasant experience he didn’t want to go through more than necessary.

He’d still been rather curious, though, the heart of an adventurer still beating strong after all these years, and so he’d jumped on the chance when Alalia had hesitantly offered to show him her homeland after the last hero had been slain.

And so, the Guide found _himself_ being guided by the dryad, walking several steps behind her. As they walked, the dirt under their feet gave way to mud, and the pure green of the Purity’s grass began to take on a more yellow tint. The air hung thick and humid around them (the Guide could understand why the dryads wore such scant clothing, he was already getting clammy in his worn gray sweatshirt) and the canopy of the trees closed in above them, nearly blocking out the sunlight. The sounds of chirping and buzzing and dripping water surrounded them, and as the Guide stared around in awe, he could swear he saw the vibrant flowers being shifted by some creature he just barely couldn’t see.

“Watch your step,” Alalia called back to him, tearing his focus from the trunks of the rich mahogany trees. She carefully edged around what looked to be a surprisingly large, muddy puddle as she spoke. “The animals may not hurt you, but the thorns in the underbrush will, and the piranhas wouldn’t want to be disturbed.”

Guide simply nodded in response, copying her route around the pool as they ventured deeper. All the tension in her seemed to have drained away the moment they’d entered the jungle proper, and now she was making her way easily through the thick brush, without leaving a trace of her presence. Her traversing the jungle was like a fish swimming through the waters, and the Guide couldn’t help but watch her with the same sense of wonder as the rest of the environment.

“So, where are we going?” the Guide asked, his voice low as if he were afraid of disturbing the jungle’s ambiance.

“We will walk a short while longer, and then travel underground,” she replied without missing a beat, “This is not the jungle I hail from, but some of my sisters should be hidden there.”

“Are you sure they’d be okay with me visiting? I mean…”

He trailed off, grimacing. The Guide tended to not get along well with most of the dryads, or magically attuned beings in general–something about his ‘aura’ being wrong due to his  _condition_. Even Alalia herself had nearly attacked him on sight before he’d gotten the chance to explain his circumstances.

Alalia stopped for a moment, glancing back at him, a slightly pained look tugging at the corners of her own lips. “You are with me, and I trust you. If that isn’t enough for them, I will try to make them understand.”

The Guide let out a long sigh through his nose and gestured for her to keep walking, which she did after a moment of hesitation. He followed after, struggling to keep himself from sinking into the mud as his mind turned to darker things.

Alalia’s people and the jungle at large had been close allies with the Hallowed creatures back when they’d still existed. The day the Hallow had been sealed, the jungle and its inhabitants had lost a large amount of its security from the spreading Corruption and Crimson, and Guide couldn’t help but feel like he was somehow partially responsible for it, despite it not really being him who had done it. It felt almost wrong being in her territory, an emissary of the thing that had taken away the jungle’s peace of mind.

As if him thinking of it had invoked it, Guide felt a stirring at the back of his soul and a chill at the base of his spine. His lips pressed together tightly and his fists clenched at his sides, his walk slowing.

“Just – just let me have  _this_ ,” he muttered aloud.

“What was that?” Alalia looked over her shoulder.

“Nothing.”

Both of them knew it was far from nothing, but neither wanted to acknowledge it right then. Guide tried to shake it off as they continued deeper into the jungle, going back to admiring the scenery.

They made idle chatter as they continued, Guide occasionally asking her about the flowers and whether he recalled their names properly. The tension the moment had brought on quickly faded as Alalia rambled on about the plants surrounding them, speaking of them fondly as if each one were a treasured friend, and he couldn’t help but smile and get wrapped up in her enthusiasm, so much like his own.

After another while of walking, Alalia suddenly stopped. Guide stepped up to her side and found himself peering into a large opening in the earth. The light only filtered down a short way through the thick vines, but he could see a few ledges covered in jungle grass before they faded into darkness.

“You can climb, yes?” Alalia didn’t wait for his answer before jumping down the opening to the nearest ledge, landing gracefully in a crouch. She looked up as he gaped down at her, a slight smirk playing across her face. “You’ll be safe, the jungle creatures won’t hurt you if you stay by me – just follow my lead.”

Guide nodded, despite the fact that he wasn’t entirely sure following her lead was physically possible. He crouched down, shifting towards the edge of the opening and calculating the distance to the ledge as Alalia stood up and watched him expectantly.

Guide made the jump, though his landing wasn’t nearly as graceful – he staggered and crumpled to his knees, then his face immediately upon impact. He could hear Alalia giggling as he spat several strands of grass out of his mouth, and she quickly grabbed his arm to help him to his feet.

“S-sorry,” she said, still laughing, raising one hand to cover her mouth. “Perhaps it would be better if you used rope.”

“I didn’t bring any,” he mumbled, his face a little pink.

Alalia raised an eyebrow at him, that same knowing smirk on her face, before turning and walking up the ledge to where some vines hung from the ceiling. She easily tore down a handful of them and began to work.

It wasn’t long before she had a useable length of vine rope for him, and this was how it continued; her jumping from ledge to ledge with practiced ease, him setting the rope and climbing down after her. He had brought torches, but out of respect did not place them, instead getting her to hold one to show him where to throw his rope as the light from the surface faded into a green-tinted, murky darkness.

The sounds of the jungle seemed even louder in here, a buzzing and chirping that echoed around what seemed to be a cavernous open space. A particularly loud buzzing caught his attention as he was letting out a longer section of rope for a vertical drop of at least a few yards.

Guide glanced around nervously and caught sight of a faint shape in the darkness, causing him to freeze in his work. “Uh, Layli? Can you hold that torch up a little more?”

Alalia obliged from the ledge below, but the light didn’t reveal more than a vague shape with stripes, at least as big as Guide was. He swallowed hard, his gaze fixated on the thing making the loud buzzing and seemingly coming towards him.

Alalia seemed to notice his worry. “It is a hornet. It won’t hurt you. You're with me.”

“You sure?”

“Positive.”

Guide hesitantly looked away from the hornet and continued spooling out his rope, trying to keep focused on his task and not the buzzing that was  _definitely_  getting closer now.

He heard Alalia shifting on her feet, rustling the undergrowth. “What is it doing? It – no, no, stop.”

“Me stop?”

“No, it’s – the hornet, it seems a bit…”

Before she could finish her sentence, there was the sound of something small whizzing through the air. Guide felt a sharp pain blossoming across his shoulder blade and let out a cry, nearly toppling off the ledge in shock. He struggled to scoot himself away from the edge, the hornet circling above him and still buzzing in what the Guide could only interpret as anger.

“Guide!”

He heard Alalia calling out for him, but it was faint as the pain began to spread across his back, his entire left arm going numb at once. His stomach began to churn and he immediately felt ill, curling in on himself as if that would help him. Another stinger struck him, this time in one of his legs.

His vision went blurry and his leg went dead and he groaned in pain, screwing his eyes shut. He heard rustling and shouting and the buzzing fading into the distance, and footsteps in the grass nearby, and he was being shaken and his upper body was lifted and he thought he was looking into Alalia’s face now but the pain was increasing into an agonizing fire along his back and leg, to the point he could almost believe he was in the process of being sacrificed.

Guide managed to focus through the pain just enough to hear Alalia stammering. “ – so sorry, I thought they – I thought – because I – ” Alalia let out a distressed noise, trying to pull him to his feet. “Those – those stingers are poisonous, but I – my sisters can help, can you walk?”

He tried, but the moment his feet took his weight a bolt of excruciating pain lanced up his stung leg, forcing another strangled cry from his throat. He still fought to get his feet under him, gritting his teeth through it.

“I–I think I can – ”

“No, you can’t, stay still.”

“N-no, you – ”

Before he could protest, Alalia put her arms around his waist and bodily lifted him off the ground, throwing him awkwardly over her shoulder. For a moment, the pain was almost forgotten for surprise; the Guide wasn’t terribly large or thick in build, but Alalia was definitely smaller than him and certainly didn’t look like she could lift someone his size so easily.

He tended to forget that, for all intents and purposes, Alalia was, technically, a  _tree_.

Then, the pain surged and took his full attention again. Alalia leaped through the darkness ever downwards as if he weighed nothing, as he clung to the back of her wraps desperately in an attempt to keep from screaming in her ear. Somewhere during the descent, the poison weakened him to the point where his mind went fuzzy, and he wasn’t entirely sure he was conscious; he could hear blood roaring in his ears and he could feel Alalia moving, but that was about it.

He thought there might’ve been talking, and he might’ve been set down at some point, but he didn’t start to come to until he felt a bottle shoved against his lips and something thick and sweet in his mouth. His eyes remained closed as he swallowed the liquid down, and he immediately felt a new strength flooding his system as if he’d just drank a healing potion.

He only truly became fully conscious again when he felt something sticky being dumped on him.

Guide spluttered and flailed with his working limbs, struggling to sit up and finding his movements restricted by some thick substance. His eyes flew open, and standing above him, he could see Alalia, hands clasped tightly in front of her and eyes full of worry, and another, smaller dryad with messier hair, holding an overturned wooden bucket still dripping a gold substance.

Guide opened and closed his mouth a couple of times, trying to figure out what to say, but the smaller dryad cut him off. “How’s the pain?”

He had to think about that for a few seconds. He could feel his strength slowly returning, and a tingling sensation raced up his numb arm and leg. The all-consuming pain and sickness were fading away, leaving only two sharp, localized points of pain on his back and leg. Rather than his head spinning, he simply felt tired.

Guide blinked a couple of times in surprise, glancing between the two dryads. “…Better?”

Alalia doubled over with a sigh of relief. “Thank goodness.”

“Honey cures everything,” the other dryad said, setting the empty bucket aside an equally empty bottle with a self-satisfied huff. “Or at least, I should hope so, considering I just _used_ all of mine.”

Guide took several deep breaths, slowly sitting up straight. A faint green light from somewhere behind him illuminated the area, and he could see he was in a cavernous open space deep in the underground jungle, sitting in a puddle of thick honey that just came up to his waist as he was sitting.

“I am so sorry…” Alalia wrung her hands in front of her. “I–I really thought they wouldn’t hurt you because you were with me.”

“What can I say, even the bugs here probably think I smell like a carcass.” Alalia flinched, and Guide quickly realized that had come out harsher than he’d intended. “…I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.”

“It’s all right…” Alalia let out a long sigh. “I should have known some of the creatures wouldn’t take kindly to you. Thankfully, Lunette was willing to help when I told her it was urgent.”

Guide twisted himself around as best he could in the honey puddle, looking over his shoulder. Behind him was what looked to be a very large rich mahogany tree, like the living trees of the surface, with a green torch affixed just above the entrance. Lunette was standing in the doorway, shoulders tense and violet eyes calculating in a look the Guide had seen many times before.

“I’m not what you think I am,” Guide quickly said, raising a honey-coated hand in a gesture of peace, “I mean no harm, really. Thank you.”

Lunette continued to stare at him warily for a few moments more, before ducking back into the hollow trunk. Guide winced and turned back to Alalia, who was now sitting on the edge of the puddle.

“She’ll come around,” Alalia said. She pulled her knees to her chest, “I really am sorry…”

“It’s not your fault.”

Alalia rested her chin on her knees. “I did not want to get you hurt. I wanted you to know this place as I know it - as a home, not as a danger.”

Guide reached out, resting one sticky hand against her leg before he could think twice about it. She looked up at him with furrowed brows.

“It’s beautiful. It’s lovely. Just, uh…from a distance, maybe.”

Alalia gave a weak laugh. “From a distance, yes…” She abruptly stood, holding out a hand to help him out. “But you’re here in the heart of the jungle, now. You may as well make the most of it.”

Guide gratefully took the hand, and she pulled him up out of the honey with a surprising strength. He made to run a hand through his hair, realizing too late that his hand was still covered in honey and grimacing as he looked down at himself. It was going to take ages to get all of it off of him.

“Did you have to douse me in honey?” he asked.

Alalia glanced away, “…I panicked. It has very regenerative properties.”

“You?  _Panicking?”_

“I-I was worried!” Alalia pouted. “Do not act like that! This is serious!”

Guide almost joked back regarding how he regularly made sarcastic remarks while facing death, but bit his lip – she wasn’t as desensitized to it as he was, he had to remember that. “Well…thank you. What can I do to repay you?”

Alalia’s shoulders sagged in relief. There was a moment of silence between them before a slight smile touched her lips. “Hm…if you want to repay us, you could stay long enough to join us for tea. I just hope you don’t prefer honey in your tea, as Lunette used her whole supply.”

“Trust me,” Guide replied with a little lopsided grin, holding up a hand, “I have plenty to spare.”


End file.
